Creativity Coaching: Good News – You Don’t Need Inspiration!

I know, it seems a bit weird for me to suggest that you don’t need to be inspired. Inspiration is where us creative types thrive, isn’t it? We get inspiration from on high, some sort of divine blessing, and then, suddenly a torrent of creative work pours forth.

Meh. I’m not buying it.

Yes, inspiration is great. It’s exciting when you have it. You feel tuned in to your creativity and your work feels easy. You don’t need to look for motivation, it’s all right there!

When you don’t feel inspired or motivated, you feel dull. The work can be slow, it can be hard. It’s probably not all that exciting.

Here’s the thing, though:

You can work when you are not inspired.

It might feel a little weird to bring yourself to the keyboard, to the pen, to the paintbrush, when you don’t have any ideas, but you can do it.

You can just start typing any old thing. You can just doodle while you think. You can ask yourself some questions. You can wonder ‘what if?’

Returning, over and over, to your work is what gets things done. Most of the workers in the world get stuff done that way because they don’t have the expectation that they have to be inspired before they can start.

Besides, if you think about it, we set some pretty high expectations when we have been ‘inspired’ but if we know we are just trying to get words on the screen or colours on the page, we can just go easy on ourselves.

So, go on: I dare you! Work when you aren’t inspired. Work when you aren’t motivated. Just work anyway.